{"id":650,"date":"2011-07-19T17:35:10","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dailyjoys\/?p=650"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:35:10","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:35:10","slug":"the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html","title":{"rendered":"The Tone of a Dragonfly is  a Purposeful&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Calm.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, after a full creative day at my bench, I took on the task of five off-island errands.\u00a0 Which meant organizing myself for a ferry trip and getting to five establishments before their night time close.\u00a0 Since I started this venture at the early end of a normal work day &#8211; I felt a little &#8220;behind&#8221; before I started.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson of the dragonfly has inserted itself into my consciousness.\u00a0 Good thing for me.\u00a0 I could FEEL myself flapping, unproductively, like a housefly having to flap those wings 600 times a minute in order to sustain its flight.\u00a0 I was able to picture the beauty of the dragonfly, take three, deep purposeful breaths and calm my own wing flapping down to the more tolerable thirty flaps a minute.<\/p>\n<p>Five errands equaled five hours.\u00a0 I arrived home calmly, attitude fully intact and happy to have accomplished each thing I had set out to do.\u00a0 I had to adjust my plan and map several times within that five hour period.\u00a0 In that &#8211; the dragonfly continues to be a modern marvel and model.\u00a0 In spite of its primordial roots, its practice is so very relevant to the way I live each day.\u00a0 Able to competently and flexibly change direction.\u00a0 No flap &#8211; no fuss.<\/p>\n<p>I was grateful as I pulled into the driveway of my home at dark o&#8217;thirty, that I had listened to the dragonfly&#8217;s message of intentional purpose and calm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Calm. Yesterday, after a full creative day at my bench, I took on the task of five off-island errands.\u00a0 Which meant organizing myself for a ferry trip and getting to five establishments before their night time close.\u00a0 Since I started this venture at the early end of a normal work day &#8211; I felt a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-joys"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful... - Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful... - Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Calm. Yesterday, after a full creative day at my bench, I took on the task of five off-island errands.\u00a0 Which meant organizing myself for a ferry trip and getting to five establishments before their night time close.\u00a0 Since I started this venture at the early end of a normal work day &#8211; I felt a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-19T21:35:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mary anne radmacher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful... - Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful... - Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures","og_description":"Calm. Yesterday, after a full creative day at my bench, I took on the task of five off-island errands.\u00a0 Which meant organizing myself for a ferry trip and getting to five establishments before their night time close.\u00a0 Since I started this venture at the early end of a normal work day &#8211; I felt a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html","og_site_name":"Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures","article_published_time":"2011-07-19T21:35:10+00:00","author":"mary anne radmacher","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html","name":"The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful... - Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-07-19T21:35:10+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-19T21:35:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/#\/schema\/person\/9dc771cd6fc3b9530926e5dfa2cdbd41"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/2011\/07\/the-tone-of-a-dragonfly-is-a-purposeful.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Tone of a Dragonfly is a Purposeful&#8230;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/","name":"Daily Joys and Simple Pleasures","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Mary Anne Radmacher","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/#\/schema\/person\/9dc771cd6fc3b9530926e5dfa2cdbd41","name":"mary anne radmacher","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/684\/684e8710f7c7eef0c0c433b1f635ffc4x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dailyjoys\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/684\/684e8710f7c7eef0c0c433b1f635ffc4x96.jpg","caption":"mary anne radmacher"},"description":"You may follow my writing life on my Author\/Like page: facebook.com\/MaryAnneRadmacher Find many of the products I create in the store at: appliedinsight.net I've been creating and contributing to the gift and publishing industry for thirty years. My work is often identified by my proprietary, dancing lettering. I am most known for my poem beginning, \"Courage doesn't always roar...\"I am approaching a dozen published books and continue to create, write, craft and inspire myself and others. I'm passionate about making the world a more healthy, inspired, safe place and take small actions, daily, toward that goal. 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